This weekend I turn 42. DH tells me that it is the year where I will know everything! (OK it took me a while too – 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, so therefore…). However, the lady sitting in the plane behind us told everyone that her son’s friend shot himself at age 42 so maybe knowing everything isn’t such a good idea. I think she thought she was just telling the guy in the seat next to her but she really told many more people than that. So many more.
We listened to her all the way from Hobart to Melbourne. Good thing it was a short flight, but I still got my little notebook out around halfway over and wrote down all the funny things she said. There were quite a few. It was like having our own personal soapie channel. I have much fodder for future writing. So, it’s all good.
Anyway, I am not 42 yet, I’m still 41 for another couple of days. So I don’t even pretend to know everything yet. (Perhaps it will all come in a big download overnight.) But I do know something. Here it is:
Friendship is an incredible thing!
We’ve come to Melbourne (and surrounds) on a small adventure weekend, to have a bit of a look around and enjoy each other’s company (it’s our wedding anniversary as well) and to visit good friends who live over here. Some of the people we are visiting have moved here recently and others have lived here all their lives. Everyone we are visiting we don’t get to see that often but the visits have been just so brilliant.
Yesterday at lunch time we met up with friends who just happened to be in town at the right time to visit with us as we went on our way through. It was so great to catch up, to share stories from the last year or so since they moved away from Hobart. To renew the friendship. We’re in pretty much constant Facebook contact but it was so great to sit over the table from our friends and share things face to face. It was a great way to begin the weekend.
In the evening we had a very special visit with a friend that we did missions training with twenty three years ago. That six months of training was a trial by fire and the friends that we made there have a special closeness. Our friend, her husband, and their kids invited us in to their home with open arms and we sat and talked, way past pumpkin time. We have met up three times in the last 23 years but each time it has been a meeting of like minds, of like hearts. We discussed ideas, hopes, dreams, joys and sorrows. We had a lot to catch up on, and what a joy it was!
The thing is, we had not talked to those guys at all for years! We were not Facebook friends until last night, and we haven’t sent emails or Christmas letters or anything. When we rang to say we were coming over, we didn’t even know if they were in the same house or had the same phone number. But somehow, none of that mattered. We just picked up where we left off. I tell you, they are special people!
Tonight and tomorrow we will be meeting with more super special people. My heart is full. We are blessed to be able to afford a little weekend getaway like this one but we are even more blessed in the amazing friendships that we have and the joy of catching up and renewing the friendships this weekend.
So that’s my amazing fact for the day. Friendship is a precious gift. A joyous possession. I am so blessed by my friends.
And if I don’t upload this now, I’ll be late for my next dinner date! See ya!